The Doomsters (29 page)

“When did all this happen?”

“Don’t you kid me, you remember that day I came to your office. I thought if I could talk—but we won’t go into that. You wanted no part of me. I wanted no part of you. I knew which side I was on from there on out.”

He sat up in bed and bared his arm as if the marks of the needle were battle scars; which I had inflicted on him: “The day you gave me the old rush, I made up my mind I’d rather be an honest junkie than a double-talking hypocrite. When they grabbed me this last time, I was main-lining two-three times a day. And liking it,” he said, in lost defiance. “If I had my life to live over, I wouldn’t change a thing.”

I’d begun to feel restless, and a little nauseated. The alcoholic haze was lifting from the half-forgotten afternoon when Tom had come to my office for help, and gone away without it.

“What did you come to see me about, Tom?”

He was silent for quite a while. “You really want to know?”

“Very much.”

“All right, I had a problem. Matter of fact, I had a couple
of problems. One of them was the heroin. I wasn’t all the way gone on it yet, but I was close to gone. I figured maybe you could tell me what to do about it, where I could get treatment. Well, you told me where to go.”

I sat and let it sink in. His eyes never left my face. I said, when I got my voice back:

“What was the other problem you had?”

“They were the same problem, in a way. I was getting the stuff from Grantland, all I wanted. I hear the good doctor got his last night, by the way.” He tried to say it casually, but his eyes were wide with the question.

“Grantland’s in the basement in a cold drawer.”

“He earned it. He killed an old lady, one of his own patients. I told you that last night, didn’t I? Or was it just a part of the dream I had?”

“You told me, all right, but it was just part of the dream. A girl named Mildred Hallman killed the old lady. Grantland was only an accessory after the fact.”

“If he told you that, he’s a liar.”

“He wasn’t the only one who told me that.”

“They’re all liars! The old lady was hurt, sure, but she was still alive when Grantland dropped her off the dock. She even tried to—” Tom put his hand over his mouth. His eyes roved round the walls and into the corners like a trapped animal’s. He lay back and pulled the sheet up to his chin.

“What did she try to do, Tom? Get away?”

A darkness crossed his eyes like the shadow of a wing. “We won’t talk about it.”

“I think you want to.”

“Not any more. I tried to tell you about her over three years ago. It’s too late now. I don’t see any good reason to talk myself into more trouble. How would it help
her?
She’s dead and gone.”

“It could help the girl who thinks she murdered her.
She’s in worse trouble than you are. A lot worse. And she’s got a lot more guilt. You could take some of it away from her.”

“Be a hero, eh? Make the home folks proud of me. The old man always wanted me to be a hero.” Tom couldn’t sustain his sardonic bitterness. “If I admit I was on the dock, does that make me what you call accessory?”

“It depends on what you did. They’re not so likely to press it if you volunteer the information. Did you help Grantland push her in?”

“Hell no, I argued with him when I saw she was still alive. I admit I didn’t argue very much. I needed a fix, and he promised me one if I’d help him.”

“How did you help him?”

“I helped him carry her out of his office and put her in his car. And I drove the car. He was too jittery to drive for himself. I did argue with him, though.”

“Why did he drown her, do you know?”

“He said he couldn’t afford to let her live. That if it came out, what happened that night, it would knock him right out of business. I figured if it was that important, I should start a little business of my own.”

“Blackmailing Grantland for drugs?”

“You’ll never prove it. He’s dead. And I’m not talking for the record.”

“You’re still alive. You’ll talk.”

“Am I? Will I?”

“You’re a better man than you think you are. You think it’s the monkey that’s killing you. I say you can train the monkey, chain him up and put him in the goddam zoo where he belongs. I say it’s that old lady that’s been weighing you down.”

His thin chest rose and fell with his breathing. He fingered it under the sheet, as if he could feel a palpable weight there.

“Christ,” he said. “She floated in the water for a while. Her clothes held her up. She was trying to
swim
. That was the hell of it that I couldn’t forget.”

“And that’s why you came to see me?”

“Yeah, but it all went down the drain with the bathwater. You wouldn’t listen. I was spared to go to the law. And I got greedy, let’s face it. When I bumped into Carl in the hospital, and he filled me in on the family, I got greedy as hell. He said there was five million bucks there, and Grantland was knocking them off to get his hands on it. I thought here was my big chance for real.”

“You were wrong. This is your real chance now. And you’re taking it.”

“Come again. You lost me somewhere.”

But he knew what I meant. He lay and looked up at the ceiling as if there might just possibly be sky beyond it. And stars at night. Like any man with life left in him, he wanted to find a use for himself.

“Okay, Archer. I’m willing to make a statement. What have I got to lose?” He freed his arms from the sheet, grinning derisively, and flapped them like a small boy playing airman. “Bring on the D.A. Just keep Ostervelt out of it if you can, will you? He won’t like all I got to say.”

“Don’t worry about him. He’s on his way out.”

“I guess it’s Maude I’m worried about.” His mood swung down with a hype’s lability, but not as far down as it had been. “Jesus, I’m a no-good son. When I think of the real chances I had, and the dirty trouble I stirred up for the people that treated me good. I don’t want Maude to be burned.”

“I think she can look after herself.”

“Better than I can, eh? If you see Carl, tell him I’m sorry, will you? He treated me like a brother when I was
in convulsions, spouting like a whale from every hole in my head. And I got more holes than most, don’t think I don’t know it. Pass the word to Archer when you see him?”

“What word?”

“Sorry.” It cost him an effort to say it directly.

“Double it, Tom.”

“Forget it.” He was getting expansive again. “This being Old Home Week, you might as well tell the Parish broad I’m sorry for brushing
her
off. She’s a pretty good broad, you know?”

“The best.”

“You ever think of getting married again?”

“Not to her. She’s got a waiting list.”

“Too bad for you.”

Tom yawned and closed his eyes. He was asleep in a minute. The guard let me out and told me how to reach the post-operative ward. On the way there, I walked through the day in the past when this story should have begun for me, but didn’t.

It was a hot day in late spring, three years and a summer before. The Strip fluttered like tinsel in the heatwaves rising from the pavements. I’d had five or six Gibsons with lunch, and I was feeling sweaty and cynical. My latest attempt to effect a reconciliation with Sue had just failed. By way of compensation, I’d made a date to go to the beach with a younger blonde who had some fairly expensive connections. If she liked me well enough, she could get me a guest membership in a good beach club.

When Tom walked in, my first and final thought was to get him out. I didn’t want the blonde to find him in my office, with his special haircut and his Main Street jacket, his blank smile and his sniff and the liquid pain in
the holes he was using for eyes. I gave him a cheap word or two, and the walking handshake that terminates at the door.

There was more to it than that. There always is. Tom had failed me before, when he dropped out of the boys’ club I was interested in. He hadn’t wanted to be helped the way I wanted to help him, the way that helped me. My vanity hadn’t forgiven him, for stealing his first car.

There was more to it than that. I’d been a street boy in my time, gang-fighter, thief, poolroom lawyer. It was a fact I didn’t like to remember. It didn’t fit in with the slick polaroid picture I had of myself as the rising young man of mystery who frequented beach clubs in the company of starlets. Who groped for a fallen brightness in private white sand, private white bodies, expensive peroxide hair.

When Tom stood in my office with the lost look on him, the years blew away like torn pieces of newspaper. I saw myself when I was a frightened junior-grade hood in Long Beach, kicking the world in the shins because it wouldn’t dance for me. I brushed him off.

It isn’t possible to brush people off, let alone yourself. They wait for you in time, which is also a closed circuit. Years later on a mental-hospital ward, Tom had a big colored dream and cast me for a part in it, which I was still playing out. I felt like a dog in his vomit.

I stopped and leaned on a white wall and lit a cigarette. When you looked at the whole picture, there was a certain beauty in it, or justice. But I didn’t care to look at it for long. The circuit of guilty time was too much like a snake with its tail in its mouth, consuming itself. If you looked too long, there’d be nothing left of it, or you. We were all guilty. We had to learn to live with it.

Rose met me with a smile at the door of Carl’s private room. She held up her right hand and brought the thumb and forefinger together in a closed circle. I smiled and
nodded in response to her good news, but it took a while to penetrate to my inner ear. Where the ash-blond ghosts were twittering, and the hype dream beat with persistent violence, like colored music, trying to drown them out.

It was time I traded that in, too, on a new dream of my own. Rose Parish had hers. Her face was alive with it, her body leaned softly on it. But whatever came of her dream for better or worse belonged to her and Carl. I had no part in it, and wanted none. No Visitors, the sign on the door said.

For once in my life I had nothing and wanted nothing. Then the thought of Sue fell through me like a feather in a vacuum. My mind picked it up and ran with it and took flight. I wondered where she was, what she was doing, whether she’d aged much as she lay in ambush in time, or changed the color of her bright head.